18. Repair Is Foundational (Connection Part 3)

Repair is the third major pillar in healthy attachment.  Repair in a relationships is in some ways the most important aspect and also the most elusive.  We know that in this fallen world we will have conflicts in even our most cherished relationships.  

When you were growing up, was good repair demonstrated for you?  When you misbehaved were you invited to repair with a parent?  Did you ever experience your parent apologizing and repairing after they were harsh to you?  Was there an opportunity to discuss the conflict in a way that felt safe?

The forgiveness we have in Christ frees us to move toward reconciliation with others, whether we are the offender or the offended, or as is often the case, both.  The opportunity for Repair serves as a foundation saying we are always safe; this too can be forgiven.  Conversely, when repair is not available we will feel the need to walk on egg shells in the relationship.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to the Story Matters Podcast. I'm Ryan Baker.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

And I'm Emily Baker.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

We believe people grow and heal through understanding how our stories are rooted in God's redemptive story.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

We hope our conversations encourage you to engage your story and the world around you with a new lens.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

We're glad you're here. We're continuing looking at the anchor points of attachment. We've looked at attunement and we've looked at containment. And in this conversation, we're going to look at the third one, which I think is the engine or the fuel behind it, but we're looking at repair.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

It's in essence the gospel. I think you and I have talked so much about repair and marriage that today it's going to be a challenge for us to keep it to the attachment realm of how was it in your childhood? Can we listen to this? Can we even, you and I, talk about this as it pertains, particularly to the development of a child throughout her or his life? What was it like in your childhood growing up? Was there repair? And what do we even mean by repair?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Yeah, and it's sort of a good news, bad news of attachment, because the good news, as as you're gonna hear us discuss, what we mean is you're gonna mess up. So that's the good news that when you mess up, we can repair. We can repair with our children, with our spouse, with any relationship. But the bad news is in present tense, repairing is hard because it means somebody has to say, I've messed up, I'm sorry. And often, if not most of the time, we grew up in households where the adult figures almost never admit wrongdoing.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

I remember one time we were sitting in a circle, it was a Bible study, and there were probably 18 to 20 adults in this room. And for whatever reason, you asked at one point, you said, Raise your hand if in your childhood on a regular basis you heard a mom or a dad apologize to you for anything to any degree and say the words I'm sorry for. And sheepishly, I think two people slowly and gradually raise their hands as they were thinking. Everyone else very confidently looked around each other like, nope, not me. And it was really shocking to think we have this many adults, Christians, these are like people that you would consider church leaders to say, what's your view of the gospel? And repair was not modeled.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah. And so then the next question would be, okay, when repair is not modeled, what am I doing as a child in response? And so just to get kind of a level set, what do we mean by repair? You and I heard a person recently talk about how when you have people trying to get along, it's like trying to describe a traffic accident from their vantage point. And the point this man was making was it's always slightly different based on your background, based on where you were standing. I think most of us are familiar with that. But what we both responded with was, yeah, we have to agree there is truth. If there was a film of the accident, that would be the facts. And so as you think about a lot of what we've talked about in these podcasts, shalom is the way things were supposed to be. There has to be the collective agreement that there is a right way, there is a way things were supposed to be. And if two people are in an argument, we have to sort of hold that there is a truth.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Yeah, I think I hear you saying that everybody thinks they're right in an argument or in an accident, the eyewitnesses all think they saw it correctly. But I think you're saying that if we could all watch the video surveillance or the game film, we sometimes call it, could we see, oh, actually that person was at fault? And could that person admit it?

SPEAKER_01 3:45

And this is probably the hardest thing to name. Do you even care? Our goal in attachment and in any relationship is for things to operate according to the design. And when it we deviate from that, there's a problem, right? And repair is simply naming the deviation and coming back. It brings us back to shalom, but in some ways it's stronger than it was before. So often in our lives we approach it legally, like we just want to win the argument. We want to feel right. It's not so much that we want to be actually correct. In other words, is that hunger for truth, the hunger and thirst for righteousness for shalom restored, is that strong enough for us to name places we have deviated from shalom?

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Like when we're caught and it's us, can we equally have that same desire to see, oh, it was actually me that time?

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Because the alternative, and this is really this is the point. When we don't repair, we're saying this is the new normal. We throw the word around we being humanity, I don't know. The word dysfunction. That's just been, you know, as long as I've been alive, oh, there's a dysfunctional family. And I was thinking about that term. I'm sure there's many ways to describe it, but in my mind, when shalom is broken, that's not the essence of dysfunction. Something is not functioning right, but for me, the way I think of it, dysfunction is when the response to that is, well, this is the way it's gonna be. You know, so if in a family there's a rupture, which is the impetus for the repair, but we can't name that. We can't say this hurt my feelings, or that's not the way we should be doing things, especially as a child.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Well, you're basically describing people that will say, in my family, we didn't talk about things, we shoved things under the rug. I think every one of our listeners, even if you weren't raised in that kind of family, you know what we're talking about when we talk about shoving it under the rug. I remember being so impacted by a question I asked an older man once, older meaning older than me. He's one of our heroes of the faith. We spent a year with him in Japan. His name's Dan Iverson. We love him, we love his family. He came to visit us years after we had spent that year in Japan. I remember asking him, Your kids have all now grown. They're all out of the home, and they all in a different, unique way love the Lord, serve the Lord in different capacities with their gifts and talents. What's your trick? Like, what was your parenting trick, you know? And he without hesitation looked at me and said, Do you repent to your kids? And I actually said, Yeah, that's about all I got. I'm actually looking for something more. And he said, Oh, no, no, that's all you need. Now he was being simplistic, but what he went on to say, it's not easy and it's not common. But they need to know that we are sinners in need of grace. Yes, we're their parents, but we mess up.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

And we both love that advice. And yet, I'm aware, I think, man, I know how to do that. And then I find myself struggling as my children are at different ages, as different things like buttons get pressed, if I feel disrespected as the father, etc., etc. But I want to remind our listeners again, the first audience of this discussion is were you in a safe container? So remember last conversation we talked about containment as sort of the space where attunement is played out. And what we didn't name in that conversation, but that's what we're doing now, is what happens when it doesn't go well. So for example, if you know at dusk you have to come home when you're 10 playing with friends, and on one occasion you come in, maybe just a hair after that, and one of your parents yells, like gets angry at you. The container is now shifting to rigidity. Your body is wondering, oh my gosh, what am I gonna do? And all sorts of potentials. You know, you could say, you know, I'll never do that again, or maybe you'll say, I'll be sneakier when I come in, or whatever. Vows, agreements.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Right. So you either become more rigid and more obedient, or you become more rebellious and more secretive.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

So in other words, the container shifted. But if that parent in you can have a repair, then the parent can apologize, and by that what we mean is actually naming what they did wrong. So often we'll say, I'm so sorry, I got upset, you just made me mad. We'll add the blame in there. But the truth is, if that child can feel seen in the repair, feel felt, and believe in their body, though there's gonna be some time that may need to pass, that my parent is sorry, the container is restored.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

We've heard so many stories like this where someone will write a story from their childhood and they do come in late or something happens and they know something really unusual has happened. Even abuse of sorts. I mean, I know I've heard these stories where they come in and dad's really angry they're late, and there's never the check-in. So when, you know, there is repair like you're describing, the father or the mother could say, I'm really sorry I reacted so harshly. I still want you to obey our rules. There's still that container, but I was wrong in the way I acted. Are you okay? Is everything okay? That would open up communication lines for no, actually, I had a really bad date and it didn't go well. So this is way more about how the child views him or herself because if that repair didn't happen, the child often thinks, I'm just bad. I should just not be late. And it's like there's never a check-in again with but was there a reason? And they're not bad.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Especially when they're younger, right? Depending on the developmental stage, we are predisposed to needing our parents to be the hero. Even in severe abuse homes, you'll find young children unable to agree that there was abuse until much later with much work. And so in the same way, when a parent is getting angry or the parent is going against shalom, is they're rupturing the relationship through any number of means, our shame attendant, using Kurt Thompson's language, our the part of us that is prone towards shame will say, This is my fault.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

I'm just bad. I deserved it. Like I wasn't an obedient kid, so my dad yelling at me was appropriate. Think about how skewed that child's neurobiology is getting wired to think when I do something that's not perfect, I deserve an attack if it's never repaired.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Yes. You gave us a great illustration from Dan Iverson, but what are other options out there that you've heard of?

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Right, like the parent that says, never repent to your child, because then she'll see your weakness. That's been said. And you'd have to think to yourself, why would a parent, and at that point it was a grandparent, saying to their child who's now a parent, don't repent to your kids. I think Dan Iverson's approach is a lot more gospel-centered here, right? Just because you become a parent does not mean you've become a saint. So what would the fallout be? I think that's my curiosity in this conversation is what does it look like? You take two children, one that's gonna come from this father that says, Repentance is my main parenting goal. I gotta live out the gospel compared to this other woman that says, never repent, it shows your weakness. What's the outcome gonna be of these two different children?

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Before we explore that answer, the underlying worldview of the one that says, I'm going to apologize, repair the rupture, over the one who says don't. The worldview of the first is that strength in the relationship is not because the child believes something to be true about me, even if it's not, or just obeys me no matter what, because that's what I need to feel safe and good as a parent. But rather, the reality of this world is when something is restored, it's often stronger than it would have been. And that's a mystery because we don't want to break things just to strengthen them.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Is there any way you would just say it again? Because that's kind of huge. The worldview underlying the man who says, We've got to repent to our kids. That's like my parenting advice, my number one parenting advice. What'd you just say? The worldview behind that.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Well, I'd like to illustrate it because for me it's been a few years ago that I heard uh Mako Fujimora talk about Kentsugi. The art of Kentugi was when an heirloom would break in Japan, these would be heirlooms passed on from generation to generation, certain jars or glass pottery. Rather than throwing it away or just somehow kind of gluing it back together, there was an entire art form where the craftsman or woman would bring everything back together using gold. And they were so amazing at the craft that the recognition was the actual piece was not only more beautiful than it was before with this beautiful gold interlacing it, but actually stronger. And just when you juxtapose that with sort of the American consumeristic culture where we just throw things away, I think those are great metaphors for what we're talking about. Where the idea that when something is broken, repairing it is so much more beautiful and necessary, and it's actually stronger than just not admitting it, because when you just don't admit that it was broken, you're basically saying this is the way it's going to be. And it's confusing and it's traumatic for a child to think, oh, this is normal.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

From my perspective as a parent, those moments of repair that I, even though I think my child was wrong, my response went up and over their wrong with harshness or behavior that I'm not proud of. And it may not be harsh, it may be very passive-aggressive. When I have gone to them in repair, it is absolutely the strongest and most beautiful moments I have with them. The Kent Sugi art metaphor is perfect because it's more beautiful than even before. Like you said, you don't want it to have ever been broken. When families have these big eruptions and there's fights that you think if this was caught on film, we would be so embarrassed. But then when there's really good repair, it almost feels like, oh, I'm so thankful that happened because we love each other all the more.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Absolutely. And, you know, we encounter whether it's within our own marriage and parenting or clients, but that there's so much shame around rupture. Like we feel bad. In fact, even now listening to this podcast, it's gonna be very hard to differentiate your experiences of rupture with your mother and father growing up, and just as a parent or friend or spouse. And the reason we want to always draw that out is first of all, certainly we would love for our listeners to believe more fully that repair in the face of rupture in your current relationships is important and beautiful and life-giving. But these three topics within the realm of attachment theory, attunement, containment, repair, can feel overwhelming. So many people hear these things and go, Oh, I didn't have any of those. That's why we're talking about it. The actual repair of our wounds, which have present-day implications, stems from our ability to name this wasn't good. And in the absence of attunement, or in the absence of healthy containment, or in a relationship with my parents where we never repaired, mom and dad never did anything wrong or told me they did. By naming that as an adult, you're actually tending to that little version of you because you're needing to say, that was not okay. This is not the way it was supposed to be. And that is the beauty of the gospel is that when Jesus shows up, we are free to actually move around the cabin of our soul and say, Oh, there are so many little places where I'm operating as I did when I was little because nobody invited me to repair. And now that I'm an adult, I can change that.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Well, now that we're adults, I think we come up against people that want to compare their childhoods to other people's childhoods and say it was really not that bad. But we're asking in the shallow mark to compare to Eden. And so when we give these moments of description of attunement and containment and good repair, it can feel like pie in the sky. Like that doesn't really happen on this earth. But if we don't have that as our plumb line, kind of going back to your car accident idea, if there isn't truth, if there isn't real data, well, we're all just lost. And so I would like to share the analogy you've given a long time ago in a sermon, and I kind of took it and ran with it. And I use it a lot with clients to illustrate what good repair really looks like. And as I do it, most of us feel like, oh, have I ever even experienced something like this? But let me give you the analogy or the metaphor. And then you can kind of be playful, listener, with where are you in this story as I tell the story, and how would it look like if it wasn't happening to you? So imagine that in a moment of rupture, your bedroom wall gets a hole punched in it by someone and then they leave. Okay, there's a rupture. Ideally, this is the ideal thing. That person comes back and stands in the doorframe of your bedroom and says, Hey, knock, knock, I'm sorry. Can I come in? And that person gives you the freedom to say, I'm not ready, come back, or thank you, I forgive you. That is huge to say, I'm sorry, but that's the beginning of repair. Then that person would say, Can I come in? And can I look at the hole I punched? I'd like to repair that. Again, you're given the option, are you ready? You have agency as the one who's been harmed. Yes, come in or no, not yet. And then think about the repair process. That person that did the harm is gonna come maybe patch the hole. Maybe there's the joint compound's gonna go on, and then there's the first coat of paint, second coat of paint, until it looks restored and the person whose bedroom it is says, we're good. Think about how many trips back into that bedroom, how many touch-ins. Are you still okay? Do you want to talk about it? I kind of notice that you're still hesitant to talk to me. So in an ideal situation, that's what it can look like. Now, one of the problems when we talk about this analogy is often in a marriage, the one person punches the hole, and then you run to the other room and punch the other hole and you've got two holes and you go, Well, who's gonna repair first? And then if you just keep saying, Well, I have a hole, you do too, you don't get anywhere. But I think that's kind of a fun metaphor that you told one time that helps me really think through. It's so fun. It's so fun. But we've used it with our kids to say, look, robotically saying, I'm sorry, which half the time sounds like, I hate you, leave me alone, I'm so annoyed by you, I'm sorry, is not repair.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yeah. And so what you're saying makes so much sense and is so hard to do. But what you're saying is repair has everything to do with the wounded person being restored as much as possible to shalom. And every time the offender has to move toward that incident, shame is there. And the problem that with shame is remember, and we haven't done a deep dive yet on shame, but shame is not the same as guilt. Guilt is I did something wrong. I punched a hole in the wall. Shame is the felt sense that I am flawed because of what I've done. I'm just this angry monster, or I lie versus I'm a liar. Or I'm clumsy, or whatever is going on with the wall, or whatever situation. And so you can imagine with that being super present, we want that behind us as fast as we can. And so we do use the word sorry often just to get rid of our shame. And to have to revisit things over and over.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

So many people say I'm sorry, and it literally sounds like get off my back. I've said I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

The interesting thing is, even that's super hard to do, but it's nothing without the agreement of repair. Now, I can imagine a naysayer going, Yeah, but like, what if someone wants to keep going back and keep going back? I don't know. I will just say this. Probably it's because repair has not actually taken place. It probably means that the actual harm is not being fully addressed. But the goal of repair in its simplest form, when you think about being a young child and your parent, mother or father rupture the situation. Let's say a very common one I've heard with many, many people is something like, hey, we were doing homework together and mom or dad was helping me, or a big brother or big sister, and I just didn't understand something and they called me stupid, or the parent got upset and walked away, or whatever. So there would be a rupture within the container, right? The container should have been safe. I have room to not understand my schoolwork. They're coming up against their own stuff, but staying with me and all that. Well, when that rupture happens, it leaves a lifelong residue unless there's repair. And the beautiful thing about repair in those early days is that's what keeps traumas from happening. A trauma is not the event itself, it's the event left unattended to. And so when we repair with our children, you know, again, a lot of people in this work will say, Oh, that's gonna be a story for them. And the crazy beautiful thing is often the answer is like it may be, but probably won't. Not if the parent really said, Look, I'm so sorry when you were doing that math. I got frustrated. And honestly, buddy, I think it's cause like I'm not great at math. I'm trying to. So will you forgive me? Let's sit down again and let's try this again. I'm really sorry. You're doing so good.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

But think about the maturity level of that parent that would be able to recognize why they blew up at their kid. And I think we can't really talk about these three components, attunement, containment, and repair, without talking a little bit in circles. But going back to the containment, if the parent is insecure and there's not good containment, they would say the child punched a hole in my wall by not understanding the math, and I've got to make dinner. I've been hurt. And so many of the people we work with, and some of our stories is at the arrows of care that we've got to go stand in the door frame of our parent and say, Hey, I think I hurt you when I was not understanding my math. That is a high level complex tool. Twisted, non-contained, non-repairing home that we're left with the residue of it must be my fault, so I've got to kind of make sure everyone's okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

That is so important to understand. When you were growing up in your family of origin, was the repair a parent coming toward you, or was it you moving toward your parent, either by dismissing your needs, by apologizing, or by colluding with them and just letting it go? But all of those, if the arrow of care is going toward the parent, means you are in some sense being parentified, even as a youngster, and your self and your understanding of yourself has now been skewed, and the light is not being reflected towards you from your parents. And it shapes you. And it shapes you all the way into your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. Like that's why we do this work because we're not just trying to be the bearer of bad news, saying, uh-oh, well, you didn't have repair, that sucks. But rather, remember, I threw the book when I read about attachment theory. But rather, oh, I can name these places, understand what I was designed for, and grieve these wounds and their effects, and actually find healing in my adult years. Also, and Emily, you shared this in our last conversation. I can begin by offering good repair to my significant other, my children, my work wherever I'm engaging with other humans, the church, and that also will begin to change our neurobiology and our hearts around those early wounds.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

So I've got to say one more thing that's gonna feel a little bit complex, and then we can try to wrap this up. But as you're talking, I'm realizing that it may be easy for someone listening to think, well, as a teenager, I did a lot of even as a child, I was kind of a bad kid. I should have said I was sorry to my mom and dad. That needs to happen. We would agree with that. Here's a little bit of the nuance that I'm feeling. If as a child I know I disobeyed, I should say, I'm sorry, I disobeyed. And the parents almost in a very kind way can say, Thank you. This is good repair. I I'm doing the repair as a kid. Does that make sense? But it's when I know in my body I've done more than just break a rule, I've hurt mom, or I've really upset dad in a way that now I have to care for their emotional state. I know recently, because of all this that we deal with, I recently got upset by one of our kids. And I remember, I think I was even saying, you've really hurt me. And I think you rightfully stepped in. I don't know if it's private, it it worked. Somehow you you were like, it's not about us being hurt. It's about them understanding this is a boundary that you broke and we're gonna maintain it for the sake of your safety, and this is the rules that we're gonna live by, but it's not about you've really hurt mom. Because then that's where the shame enters, more than just the guilt of a sin, like, oh hey, I stayed out too late. It's no, you really you've got to get back and write standing with mom.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Totally. I think, first of all, in the first example, though, that is the ideal. A child can think, I broke a rule, I need to apologize. However, let's also make sure we say the parent should be able to carefully and kindly come to the child and just point that out as well. Hey, did you notice when you did this, this is breaking the rule or whatever? So the rupture is being named, whether the child sees it on their own or the parent rings it. But your point that is so important is so often the rupture is being turned into a personal attack. You've hurt me.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

And we do talk about breaking trust. Like you broke trust.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Like I have felt that as a dad. Like, I'm your father. Where's the respect? Now, please hear me. Of course, my feelings might be hurt. I have my own stuff, but the challenge is that I don't codify those words by acting like this is what should be said because I'm a father. Rather, maybe in my own time with the Lord, exploration of my feelings, discussions with you, I can know, oh man, this thing happened with this child, but I felt something far deeper. And I need to and have the privilege in the Lord to go find what did that bring up for me? Where from my own story, my own childhood, did that sort of hearken back to and is there work to be done? But we don't want to call that with that child now owes me this deep apology because I'm their parent and there's respect. We don't want to do that. We just want to make sure we're not conflating those two things.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Well, and we're venturing into possibly another podcast episode about how, as parents, our children at different ages provoke us to feel young and actually activate stories of harm in us, and we can often flip it. We as the parents, like you just described, are not in a healthy place as we hold up these boundaries. We're actually acting very young.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

But here's the deal it's kind of like the worst of two worlds. On one hand, it's our young hurt places that are kind of taken over, but we're standing on the law of I'm your father.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

It's a bad deal.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

So it's like a double whammy. It's like, hey, you listen, you have to listen here.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Right. Thinking back to our own childhoods, we could say, Yeah, when I did certain things, I could see my dad's rage looked like a 14-year-old boy, and it was scary, but it was in an adult body. So you kind of feel like, uh, something's happening here.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

I was watching a reel earlier of a pastor. It was one of those shots where there may not have even been anyone in the room, but he was just going off in a rage about how his congregation doesn't read their Bible. I mean, hitting the podium and hitting the thing, and that's so effective. He even kicked it. I mean, it was appalling. And I went to the first comments, and the very first person was like, I totally get this and think this is so needed, or something like that, which then yielded like 4,000 responses. But a person who would think that's normal is because they received wrath under the guise of a good parent and there's never been repair. This pastor is trying to sell, I'm being a good pastor right now. He's not gonna come back and say, Hey, I lost my temper. It's gonna be wrapped up under the wrath of healthy righteousness. You know, this was needed. Beat this into you. Yeah. And so just pay attention to like, well, you know what, that generation they spanked hard, or you know, that generation did the silent treatment. They don't talk about their feelings. So often we're dismissing wounds we endured. That's why we're doing these topics. Because when you were little, you mattered, you were made for shalom. I don't know what particular situation each of you were born into or endured. Some of you had wonderful childhoods with some things you were wondering about, others had awful childhoods. All of you were born outside of the Garden of Eden, and to the degree that we leave the wounds unnamed, we're saying that was the way it was supposed to be.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

The dysfunction has become the norm. And if you could put the word repair over the entire meta-narrative, it's precisely the story of redemption and salvation. It's saying Jesus is gonna enter in all through history to repair what was broken, and so we're saying please compare your childhood and your parenting to the garden, not to a generation or other families. We all need repair.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

So when we talk about repair, it's sort of the essence of the gospel. It is the lifeblood in Galatians 3. When Paul confronts the Galatians, and one of my favorite phrases, oh you foolish Galatians, right? Who bewitched you? What he's getting on to them for is he says, You began by the Spirit. Now are you being perfected by works of the law. He also said it was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Here's the point. Most of us, if we are honest, are trying to get past the point of needing Jesus to have been crucified for us presently. It's one thing to say, yeah, I need him when you know all of my sin back there. And so repair is a naming. I'm freshly in need of this washing, this cleansing. Now listen, theologically, I don't believe it only comes when you name it. But the point is, Paul's urging them to continue the posture of going back that place freshly. So that's what repair looks like. That's what repair is. And it's not just something we do with the Lord in our private devotion, but it's something we do in all the relationships. And as we've said already and we'll keep saying, it's something we look to in our own stories from our families to see was that even there, and in what ways did I respond to it not being there.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Thanks again for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. If you have any questions or thoughts about the topics today, we'd love to hear from you. We can be reached through our website, emails, and social media. Just go to Story Matters Initiative. If you're interested in doing individual or group work, we'd love to discuss that with you as well.